Andrei Cornea: Călin Georgescu and Nicușor Dan - the enigmas of mass hypnosis

For nearly two years, we have been asking ourselves how Călin Georgescu was possible. I mean, we wonder how it was possible for a candidate of the “Geto-Dacian guru” type, otherwise lacking any qualities as a politician, without the explicit support of at least some parties, starting from almost zero influence and name recognition, to bewilder so many people in such a short time that he made it into the second round. Fine, Russian money, TikTok—all these explain the external side of the phenomenon, but his meteoric rise in popularity in the autumn of 2024 retains something astonishing and still difficult to digest.

Unfortunately, not only do we lack good answers (nor have any been given to us) to this enigma concerning Călin Georgescu, but I think we are beginning to face an almost parallel question and a kind of mystery not much smaller, albeit different: in recent days and weeks, seeing the dismay, often despair, the anger not infrequently, the fierce criticism, but above all the disappointment everywhere on social media among his former supporters (myself included), I am beginning to wonder: how on earth did Nicușor Dan manage to make so many of us believe that he was the right man, not to say the providential one, to become president? After that, he achieved an unparalleled and astonishing feat: the man who, in the spring of 2024, was supported by a large part of civil society, which had placed its hopes in him for renewal, reform and, above all, a new, more open, more democratic, more honest style of conducting politics in Romania, after the sad years under Iohannis, Ciolacu, Ciucă, etc., managed to alienate us all barely a year and a half after the election. I will mention only his latest blunder, the obvious exoneration of the head of the SPP, whom the press found out, with solid evidence (very late, but that is how it is), had been an officer in precisely those Securitate troops that attacked and killed demonstrators on December 21, 1989, at the Inter barricade. When questioned by the press, the president could have invoked his ignorance of the situation; he could have suspended judgment and called for an investigation; above all, he could have asked the person in question to resign, since he had held the position for 21 years. He did none of these things. On the contrary, he categorically and without argument asserted the officer’s innocence and dismissed the accusations into oblivion, despite the evidence.

It is understandable that a man educated in a different world might lack the qualities of a statesman, of a president, if the transition from civilian life to politics is too rapid. (Although Dan has few such mitigating circumstances: he was serving his second term as general mayor of the Capital, had been a party leader, and therefore was by no means a novice in politics.) Yet something here remains incomprehensible: how is it that the president knowingly and continuously contradicts and frustrates his own electorate, the people who supported him in the first round of 2025, while making concession after concession to his adversaries (who do not refrain from showing both their satisfaction and their contempt)? In the end, one need not read Carl Schmitt to intuit that politics first and foremost means distinguishing between friends and enemies. Or, in fact, the president does make the distinction—only the president’s enemies have become us, precisely those who put him forward and voted for him, and even placed some hopes in him! Have we become them? Or were we, in fact, them all along, but for a long time failed to realize it?

And then comes the question: how did this man fool us so impeccably for so many years that we believed he could be “one of us,” or at least more “one of us,” when in fact he is “one of them,” just like Georgescu, though, let us admit, in a much subtler and more concealed way? And let us acknowledge one more thing: Georgescu (with the propagandists behind him) mainly deceived simple, uneducated people; Dan, however, managed to daze well-known intellectuals, writers, artists, valuable journalists, musicians, professors, political analysts—not to mention important politicians from the PNL and USR—but above all almost everyone who either identified with or directly took part in the major anti-communist civic demonstrations, later anti-PSD, etc., pro-democracy, anti-corruption and reform demonstrations, beginning in the ’90s of the last century.

Some of his flaws were, of course, known during the many years we had dealt with him, especially in Bucharest: it was known that he was very stubborn, but when we supported and voted for him, we did not think that he would systematically resort to the vulgar argument from authority whenever he wanted to camouflage his ignominies. We knew that he had difficulty communicating. But we did not imagine that he would quickly adopt wooden language, despite the ridiculousness of it. It was also known that he was somewhat too conservative, but we still did not suppose that he would defend neo-legionnaires, or bow and scrape before Trump, or distance himself from his European allies. We knew that he did not have much faith in parties. He had simply abandoned the USR, which he himself had founded. Still, we did not expect him to try to destroy the PNL from within by appointing a designated prime minister whom the party did not approve of. Nor could we imagine that, after long delays, he would appoint the worst chiefs to the major prosecutors’ offices—he who had nevertheless fought with the Justice system; we did not think he would keep postponing the nomination of a prime minister, although he had the means to pressure the parties into accepting a government. We naturally accepted that he would be constrained by certain circumstances and by raison d’état, and that we could not demand the impossible of him; we also took into account the inevitability of mistakes, even certain weaknesses stemming from inexperience or from bad advice given by unsuitable advisers. But we did not expect him to betray us again and again through lies, endless delays, unfulfilled promises and morally, and even politically, unacceptable appointments. And he did not betray only us, but above all those principles and ideals in whose name he ran and which we assumed he too believed in.

Georgescu presumably had Russia’s money, China’s TikTok and the complicity of certain “services” to mislead a significant part of the electorate. (Still, the plan was too brutal and failed.) But what did Nicușor Dan have in order to succeed so well? How did he manage for so many years to make fools of us, making us believe that he was devoted to democratic-liberal and civic ideals, in whose name he was elected twice as mayor of the Capital and once as president of the republic, only for us to discover now, when he has emerged from camouflage, that he appears to be the man of the “services,” the protector of individuals whose hands were stained with blood during the Revolution, reconciled with MAGA ideology, anti-liberal, an accomplice of duplicitous Social Democrats, a shadow supporter of the “networks” in the Justice system and a devoted guardian of neo-legionary circles? How did he manage it? How?

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